I stopped drinking British style ales years ago but recently I tried a nice English pale ale and enjoyed it. I'm getting a bit sick of APA's and AIPA's so was thinking of brewing an English pale soon.

All I know is I do not like the Ringwood yeast because a local brewpub uses it for almost every beer in their lineup and I got sick of it. And I once tried Safale S-04 for an ESB and it produced a sulfur bomb. (Which apparently did get a bit better with age according to the friend I left the keg with.)

So any ideas for what yeasts I might like for a nice English pale ale? Something with some character but not super duper fruity would probably suit me.

Only about 40 batches so far and no dumpers yet, and really only a couple of batches I was unhappy with. I am fortunate enough to have started brewing after the internet made so much information readily available and the brewing explosion made so many excellent ingredients readily available.

Closest I had to a dumper was an ESB that smelled like sulfur every time I brought the pint to my lips. My friend thought it was ok, so I left the keg at his house for him. He said it actually got much better with a little age.

Just curious as to why you would treat this yeast any differently than others (recognizing of course that you use a stir plate and not the shake and bake method).

You seem to be saying that the shaken starter is a bad idea for 1450. Why so?

I obviously wasn't clear...again! For many years I did the shaken starter. I was referring to pitching at high krausen not being a good idea with 1450 unless you make a very small starter. And it would likely be too small to do much good. I find that 1450 needs at least 4, more like 5, days to finish in a 2-3 qt. starter. If people have had good luck using it with Mark's method, I'd love to hear about it.

I did the modified method (no shake, pure 02 injection, no stirplate, crash at high krausen, decant and pitch) and it worked out great. Just had the first pint this week for QC purposes (saving the keg for a party) and the beer is excellent.

It will be completely beer sanitary. Sometimes we way, way, way over-worry about sanitation. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But stuff like bottled water is sanitary enough for beer, no problem. Things like aluminum foil, plastic bags, paper towels, bottled water are all sanitary enough for clean beer fermentation.

Ever since Denny claimed that foil fresh off the roll is good to go, ive trusted that. But just to be safe I spritz with starsan lol

Yeah I always squirt it with starsan and give it a couple of minutes of contact before using it.

New Brewers can get up to speed so much faster on all aspects of brewing today vs. when I started, especially on the water aspects in brewing. I hear there is a book and a spreadsheet that make it much easier.

The pros that don't pay attention do bother me, as the beers I am paying money for should be better.

+1. I find that my home-brewed beers many times can be of higher quality than some local breweries offerings. Yet they can charge $5/pint...

We have a lot of bad breweries in New Hampshire imo. It's sometimes surprising to actually get a good beer, especially if one is not fond of British styles.

You should have no problem kegging it after two weeks, or less, if your fermentation was healthy. I wouldn't cold crash before kegging because you're going to miss that yeast later. It will clear in the keg, but if enough yeast was transferred over you can shake the keg up and reintroduce yeast from the bottom later on.

Thanks.

Seemed very healthy. Pitched starter at 5 pm and had first signs of fermentation by 8 pm. By 6 am the next morning it was fully cranking with a 3" krausen. Chugged steady for 3 to 3.5 days before slowing down. I haven't gotten a gravity reading yet because I know it's probably not completely done, but I would bet a lot it's close. Pitched at 60 and fermented at 62. (Beer temps.) Pure O2 for 75 Mississippi's just before pitching.